Gary Brown: Watching Phelps brings back race memories of my own

Sunday

Aug 24, 2008 at 12:01 AMAug 24, 2008 at 5:53 PM

It seems I swim like Michael Phelps. Sort of.

Gary Brown

It seems I swim like Michael Phelps. Sort of.

You've probably heard how Phelps got water under his swim goggles during the finals of the 200-meter butterfly event in the Summer Olympics — one of the eight events in which he won a gold medal. But he continued to swim, pretty much blindly. And he still finished, winning a gold medal in world record time.

The exact same thing happened to me the one time I entered a swimming race ... minus the parts about the Olympics, the gold medal and the world record.

On company time

Mine wasn't an Olympic event; it was a corporate competition. In fact, they even called the series of community athletic events the Corporate Cup.

Employees of dozens of companies were pitted against each other in mostly team events until Corporate Cup winners were determined in large- and small-company divisions.

Basketball was one of the events, which is why the average height of workers in many companies shot up dramatically. Tug-of-war was another event, which may be why so many companies started to offer company-paid buffet meals — to boost both corporate morale and company bulk.

I wouldn't say people were coerced into participating in the competitions, but they were encouraged to enter races in which they showed talent.

"Hey, we've seen how fast you run out of this place at the end of the work day. You can compete in the sprint events ..."

During the first Corporate Cup, somebody made me a swimmer.

I grew up by a lake. I owned a boat.

"Throw him in the water and see if he floats."

Day of event

I bought myself a pair of those little goggles I'd seen swimmers wear on "Wide World of Sports." I went to the YMCA pool to work out only once, and didn't stay long. No sense in peaking too soon.

Then on the Saturday morning they held the swimming events, I stepped up onto the starting platform at the end of the lane in which my company was swimming. I was to be the first swimmer competing for my team. I leaned forward, first poised and then falling, so fortunately the gun sounded.

My face hit the water. The goggles slipped down into my mouth. But I already was swimming, in a blindly thrashing sort of way.

I quickly found a guy can swim without looking if he doesn't mind weaving back and forth, bouncing off the lane markers, until he hits his head on the other end of the pool.

It's a little difficult to breathe, however, with the goggles in your mouth, like a horse's bit. So part of the way back down my lane I stopped swimming, pulled the goggles down over my neck — why hadn't I thought of this before? — and then tried to finish my leg of the race without anybody noticing I was in the pool.

The other guys on the team congratulated me with enthusiastic backslaps when I crawled out.

"We thought for sure you were going to drown! We placed bets."

Living through your event. It's a small victory. So I can more or less relate to what happened to Phelps. Except I only did it once.